UA Magazinehttp://www.united-academics.org/magazine
Research on the edge of Science and SocietySun, 26 Jul 2015 08:46:42 +0000en-UShourly1Welcome to Pluto and Charon at Last!http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/space-physics/welcome-to-pluto-and-charon-at-last/
http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/space-physics/welcome-to-pluto-and-charon-at-last/#commentsSun, 26 Jul 2015 08:45:52 +0000http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/?p=51383...Continue Reading]]>Some awesome facts about and around Pluto.

Nine years since New Horizons launched for the Kuiper Belt bodies, and finally we get the exquisite images we’ve been waiting on for so long – and they’re as fantastic as could ever be expected.

Feat of Humanity

Those space-fans among us have no doubt been keeping up with the news coming from the edge of our Solar System. The spacecraft ‘New Horizons’ did its fly-by of the Pluto-Charon system this month of July, and NASA scientists haven’t been able to sleep from all their partying ever since the first photos were beamed back to Earth.

Why all the excitement? After all, Pluto’s no longer a planet, and it’s just a bunch of pictures – right?

Not when these ‘pictures’ are by far the clearest, most detailed ever taken of the dwarf-planets. On top of that, it’s always a feat of Humanity to send a sophisitcated camera up into space – and then find that its camera still works after spending nine years in cold, empty space.

The larger body is Pluto, in the above image, and the smaller one is Charon.

Pluto’s competition

For those that remembered when Pluto got demoted: that had to do with all the new, planet-like worlds being discovered mainly within the Kuiper Belt. Worlds like Quaoar, Makemake, Haumea, Eris, and Sedna; some of which are even bigger than Pluto.

The dilemma became: either consider all these other worlds as ‘planets’, too, or demote Pluto. It was obviously much easier to do the latter. As a recap, the three criteria a ‘planet’ must fulfill now are:

Be ‘round’ (ie, be large enough for its gravity to make it round).

Be orbiting the Sun.

Finally, it must also be the predominant object in its orbital path…

The last point is new; for example, within Jupiter’s orbital path are two large collections of asteroids – the Trojans – one in front of the jovian and one behind. However, since Jupiter comprises nearly 100% of the mass in that orbit (ie, those asteroids, statistically, don’t ‘count’), it can, statistically, be considered the only planetary body in that orbit.

Same goes for the Earth… the asteroids that orbit within the same plane as Earth are called ‘Near-Earth Objects’ (NEOs). Again, Earth comprises nearly 100% of the mass in its orbital plane.

Unfortunately for Pluto, it cannot say the same thing. It shares its orbit with all these other Kuiper Belt objects, many of which are nearly comparable in size, and sometimes even larger in size. But, Pluto’s not the only one with this predicament – the asteroid Ceres also has this problem.

Back to Pluto…

Recycling surface

Surprisingly, Pluto’s surface is one of the youngest in the Solar System; not more than 100 million years old, which means it has a tectonic or geologic process that recycles its icy crust. NASA scientists claim Pluto can’t have any heating due to the Sun nor due to the force of gravity – even though it has a moon that’s half its size – so for now they’re stumped as to what’s renewing Pluto’s surface.

Maybe it’s out-gassing, since Pluto is nothing but a large comet… Just my hypothesis, though. It also has mountain belts, with some peaks reaching 3,500 meters (11,000 feet) into its tenuous ‘atmosphere’. That’s got nothing on Charon, though… It has literally got an icy facsimile of Mordor on its north pole! Not only that, but it also has an odd-looking formation jutting out of a depression – perhaps we can refer to that as its ‘Dark Tower’.

More awesomeness

Aside from the abnormally large moon Charon, Pluto also has four much smaller moons, named Nix, Hydra, Styx, and Kerberos. Each is the size of your typical asteroid – only a dozen kilometers wide, or so.

In keeping with the Underworld theme – Pluto is the Roman god of the Underworld, and Charon is the Greek ferryman of the Underworld – Nix, Hydra, Styx, and Kerberos are each taken from an aspect of Greek or Roman myth. Nix is a Greek goddess inhabiting the Underworld, Hydra is the many-headed beast that Herakles (Hercules) had to kill, Styx is the river that Charon ferries on, and Kerberos (Cerberus in Latin) is a mythical three-headed dog – ‘Fluffy’ in the Harry Potter series.

Now that the Pluto fly-by has come and gone, the New Horizons craft is expected to carry on to some of the other Kuiper Belt objects – supposedly – and snap cool images of them as well. More awesomeness to come!

Friends’ Carol and Susan, Grey’s Anatomy’s Callie and Arizona, Modern Family’s Cam and Mitch – gay and lesbian characters have become common appearances on popular television shows. At the same time, gay marriage has been legalized across the US and LGBTQ (“L”esbian
“G”ay, “B”isexual, “T”ransgender,“Q”ueer or “Q”uestioning) support is at an all-time high. Could there be a connection between the growing appearance of gay characters on television and the growing support for LGBTQ rights?

While at times, media can be seen as forces out to create negative feelings towards minority groups, recent research by Garretson of Vanderbilt University shows an example of the positive powers that media can have on group-mechanisms. The research shows that the growing presence of gay and lesbian characters in television shows, movies, and books has had a direct positive effect on people’s attitudes towards gays and lesbians and, consequently, has led to a stronger support for LGBTQ rights.

Positive attitudes

Garretson’s study uses data from the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s in which people were asked to grade their own attitudes towards gays and lesbians on a scale from 0 (cold) to 100 (warm). The surveys also asked whether respondents were familiar with the popular television show Grace Under Fire – which ran for two years in 1993 and 1994 before a gay-character related storyline emerged in 1995. By 1996, people who were familiar with the show since its beginning showed an average increase of five points in terms of positive attitudes towards gays and lesbians (compared to their own answers from the years before). Parallel to this change in attitude, these respondents’ support for gay rights had also increased. What this Grace Under Fire example shows is not that people who might already have been tolerant towards gays and lesbians were watching shows that included gay/lesbian storylines and then felt even more positively towards them. Rather, the numbers showed that people who did not express positive feelings towards gays and lesbians started feeling more supportive towards them once a gay character was introduced to a show they watched (a show that initially did not have any gay characters).

Another thing the researchers did was ask for respondents’ age. By doing so, they were able to conclude that younger people had ‘changed their minds’ a lot more radically than the older people who had seen the show. The results showed that the older the respondents got, the more they seemed to be ‘stuck’ in their old mind-sets and the less likely they were to change them.

Connecting emotionally

So, according to this research, exposure to gays and lesbians in popular media impacts the attitudes towards them in a positive way and, because of these shifts in attitude, the support for their rights increases. The main idea behind these results is that by connecting emotionally to gay and lesbian characters, even if this connection is through a television show, viewers develop a more empathic and understanding connection to them as a group.

Taking this idea further, it would be great to see more directors of movies and television shows include characters from minority groups in their story-lines, and not just as perpetual bad guys or as comic reliefs. Doing so, as the LGBTQ-example above has illustrated, might actually bring about some bottom-up mentality changes in the way certain people view ‘the other’, which in turn could mean great long-term achievements in the fights against racism and stereotyping.

This research is part of the debate on how much the media can influence (or even change) public opinion, and to what extent media content can be seen as a reflection of what people think. For the specifics of this research:

ReferenceGarretson, J. (2014). Exposure to the Lives of Lesbians and Gays and the Origin of Young People’s Greater Support for Gay Rights International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 27 (2), 277-288 DOI: 10.1093/ijpor/edu026LGBTQ, gay, lesbian, diversity, equality, media, series, friends, grey’s anatomy, modern family, gay marriage

You know a friend. This friend knows a couple friends of their own; that are not, however, friends with you. One day, they bring one or more of those friends to one of your usual Sunday coffee-shop outings, and introductions are passed about. And perhaps, at the end of it all, you end up befriending those friends as well.
Sound familiar to you?

Turns out that the spotted hyena – aka the laughing hyena – also is quite familiar with this sort of scenario. At least, the hyenas of Kenya, anyway. It’s called ‘triadic closure’, and a group of researchers studying a number of them for the past 20 years has found that these hyenas are capable of forming friend-like bonds with ‘friends’ that one of their ‘friends’ knows. This research took a new approach to all previous studies on social species’ social-networking; by performing it over such a continuous time frame, over many different social groups of one species – the spotted hyena – so that the evolution of social bonds and interactions can fully be measured, instead of having what amounts to ‘snap-shots’ of a mere couple years or so with only a couple groups.

As a result, what has been found has also been quite unique, compared to past studies.

Six degrees

Hyenas, like humans, are social animals, and they’ll commonly live in ‘clans’ of at least a few dozen individuals; but can sometimes exceed 100. It turns out that a hyena, as is usually the case with humans, won’t befriend all the members in their clan – just family members and close friends (and of course, if they choose, friends of those friends). However, since this behviour in humans leads to a phenomenon known as ‘six degrees of separation’, where one human being can typically be linked to any other human being they’ve never seen nor known of before via a chain of ‘friends’ and ‘friends-of-friends’, such that this chain in total never exceeds six, I think it’s quite possible the exact same phenomenon can occur, and is occurring, in these hyena populations.

Other things the researchers picked up on was that males tend to form close-knit friendships that almost never change, while females tended to be more on the flexible side, depending on environment and other pertinent factors like changes in clan structure and food availability. They speculate the reason is that females stay in the same clan their whole life, and so in their life-long rise through the social ranks they can afford to ‘change their mind’ on who they bond with, while males leave for another clan upon onset of puberty, and so in order to ensure they aren’t ostracized, or the like, they opt instead to choose only the best ‘friend-material’ for them, and then uphold that bond as best they can.

]]>http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/earth-environment/laughing-hyenas-have-social-network-too/feed/0Dutch universities and Elsevier fail to reach consensushttp://www.united-academics.org/magazine/sex-society/dutch-universities-and-elsevier-fail-to-reach-consensus-on-open-access/
http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/sex-society/dutch-universities-and-elsevier-fail-to-reach-consensus-on-open-access/#commentsMon, 13 Jul 2015 10:00:27 +0000http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/?p=51361...Continue Reading]]>VSNU called upon academics to play a vital role in breaking deadlock.

Recently, scholars and several research libraries have rolled out a petition to boycott Elsevier, the biggest scholarly materials publisher, in protest of its new open access policy. Elsevier, an Amsterdam based company, again faced another set of challenges- this time it’s homegrown.

Pressure on Elsevier

The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU- its Dutch acronym) has announced that the negotiation with Elsevier over open access is going nowhere, because it is in a deadlock. Last year, the association began negotiating with Elsevier to reach consensus on open access and journal subscription matters. But so far, compromise and agreement remained elusive.

The statement release by the VSNU made clear that Elsevier brought forward a series of proposals. None of them, however, appeared good enough to be accepted by the team of negotiators appointed by VSNU. The association’s position is to get the renewal of the previous agreement on a bundled package of journal subscription, which is known as ‘big deal’. The association further demanded that Elsevier allows full access (through open access) to sixty percent of the country’s scientific output by 2016 and a hundred percent by 2024. While the negotiations with Elsevier showed no result, the VSNU made clear that negotiations on open access with other major publishers such as SAGE, Springer and Wiley have succeeded.

The VSNU, disappointed and frustrated by the deadlock, has called up on academics to play a vital role to break the deadlock. First and foremost, the VSNU hopes, the academics on the editorial board may use their leverage to exert pressure on Elsevier. If this yields no result, it will request the academics to also quit Elsevier’s editorial board and also stop publishing on Elsevier’s journals.

Opening up

Industry dominant academic publishers charge high subscription fees. Yet, research libraries and authors around the world subscribe to journals owned by companies like Elsevier. The major reasons behind this are alleged editorial quality and impact factor of the journals publsihed by those companies. However, skyrocketing subscription fees combined with a growing open access movement are forcing some authors to start publishing on open access platforms. Moreover, research libraries are making policy changes to embrace the use of open access scholarly materials; which are showing steady improvements both in quality and availability.

Stop-and-frisk tactics by American police forces have been the topic of much recent debate and concern because they are seen by many as a threat to the safety of African-Americans and Latinos. Part of the debate revolves around the necessity for such tactics in the context of crime reduction. However, several researches on stop-and-frisk tactics indicate that there is no strong relationship between stop-and-frisk operations and crime reduction.

Police mistrust

Several studies show different important points relating to stop-and-frisk tactics. First of all, according to the researchers, the NYPD stopped 2.4 million people between 2009 and 2014, of which 150.000 people (6%) were arrested. 16% of these arrests were never prosecuted, and another 10% were dismissed. Only one in fifty (0.1% of all stops) led to a conviction for possession of a weapon, and again only one in fifty (0.1% of all stops) led to a conviction for a crime of violence.

Several studies state that while the use of stop-and-frisk tactics doesn’t necessarily lead to a decrease in criminality, it does damage the relationship between the population and the police. According to Solis and colleagues, Latino youth in New York had difficulties trusting the police force, because their relationship had suffered greatly from the harsh treatment during routing stop-and-frisks without cause or explanation. Another study by Epp and colleagues found that African-Americans reported way more disrespectful behavior from police officers than white Americans did, and that they consequently didn’t feel that the police was there to protect them.

Problematic profiling

This injustice felt by people who are, and/or feel that they are, treated disrespectfully by the police will lead them to conclude that the police behavior is due to how the officers see them as a ‘group’. As a consequence, the legitimacy of the police force is reduced and the police can no longer be seen as a just and fair entity that aims to protect and serve. Here, it is not important whether or not the police is in fact to be trusted, but rather, that a large part of the population feels it isn’t.

Rather than aiming to reduce crime by personally ‘stopping’ (and frisking) hundreds of thousands of citizens hoping to find a guilty one amongst them based on a profile that they might seem to fit, more should be done to combat structural poverty leading to crime and the overall societal marginalization of certain groups. In the very least, it seems that more could be done to target or single out the specific groups of people who get convicted, rather than having all the others suffer the consequences.

Science and spirituality are two forces that seem to counteract each other. While science focuses on the natural world, spirituality connects us to the supernatural (or something bigger than ourselves). While science seeks the origin of species, spirituality may give direction in life. So what is the connection?

With the increasing popularity of spirituality in Western societies, science is called upon to determine its value. From a professional point of view, this popularity makes me curious about the link between science and spirituality. From a personal point of view, I believe the supernatural exists and I practice spirituality on a regular basis. Therefore, I aim to reveal how scientists investigate spirituality.

How do scientists approach spirituality?

To assess the value of spirituality, this article aims to give a clear, imaginable and humble impression of spirituality research. The selected research describes spiritual practices, which are practiced by people of multiple religious affiliations and even by irreligious people. In the remainder of this article, five relevant studies describe health- and/or cognitive effects of five spiritual practices: Meditation, prayer, yoga, choir singing and fasting.

1. Meditative relaxation activates healthy genes

Who? Manoj Bhasin and colleagues

When? 2013

Where? General Hospital Boston, USA

Why? Meditation enhances the ability of the brain. Does it also positively influence gene expression?

How? 26 inexperienced meditators participated in an American study, performing a meditative relaxation training. This training included reciting words, breathing, prayer and several meditative exercises. Participants executed an eight-week training program, performing the meditative relaxation routine (lasting for 10-20 minutes) on a daily basis. Blood samples of the participants were frequently collected and used to test the differences in gene activity of different blood cells.

What? After eight weeks, the gene profile of the inexperienced participants changed tremendously, resembling those of experienced meditators. The changed gene activity has four main effects: more efficient energy production, improved control of blood sugar, anti-aging effects and anti-inflammatory effects.

Spirituality-meter: 4.5 out of 5. Meditation is a relaxation exercise, which is frequently used to achieve a higher consciousness or to focus on God. The beneficial health effects of meditative relaxation is proven convincingly. Both inexperienced and experienced meditators train their genes to contribute to a long and healthy life. The most logical next step is to repeat the experiments with bigger experimental groups.

2. Personal prayer pushes self-control to higher levels

Who? Malte Friese and colleagues

When? 2014

Where? Saarland University, Germany

Why? Personal prayer improves self-control in the long-term. So what about short-term effects?

How? This question motivated German/Swiss scientists to recruit 60 religious and irreligious volunteers and divide them in four groups: two experimental and two control groups. All groups performed similar procedures, only the first task for the experimental groups was more stressful. First, all groups wrote down all their thoughts for six minutes. At the same time, the experimental groups were asked to suppress thoughts of white bears, making the task more stressful. Second, all groups were asked to either pray freely (for people, concerns, desires etc.) or to think about anything, both for five minutes. Third, all participants performed the same computerized Stroop task, recognizing the ink color of the color terms as quick as possible. For example: blue or red. The Stroop task results of the thinking- and praying experimental groups were compared with the results of the non-stressed thinking- and praying control groups, respectively.

What? The stressed thinking group performed worse than the corresponding non-stressed group, whereas the stressed prayers performed equally well. Therefore, prayer probably counteracts cognitive depletion after stress. Interestingly, the beneficial effect of prayer was independent of the religiosity of the participants.

Spirituality-meter: 4 out of 5. Personal prayer, which is usually interaction with God or other spiritual beings, helps coping with stressful situations, whereas free thinking does not help. This could be due to the social aspect of prayer, since earlier research shows that social interactions improve cognitive functioning. Comparing divine- and earthly interactions could underline the importance of prayer. Downside of this study: Only end results were reported, speed and accuracy were not scored separately.

3. Yoga immediately improves brain function

Who? Neha Gothe and colleagues

When? 2013

Where? University of Illinois, USA

Why? Research on yoga and cognition is rare.

How? American scientists recruited 30 inexperienced female students for a 20-minute yoga practice, which included physical movements, postures, regulated breathing and meditation. The same participants also performed a 20-minute jogging exercise on another day. After both sessions, the volunteers performed several computerized cognitive tasks, such as pressing the right button when a yellow cross appeared. During the tasks, the women’s accuracy and speed were assessed.

What? Volunteers had higher accuracy and shorter reaction times after the yoga practice than after jogging exercise. Because all participants did not regularly attend yoga sessions, the positive effect is an immediate effect. Yoga practice boosted the cognitive abilities, such as focus, accuracy and information processing.

Spirituality-meter: 4 out of 5. Yoga is a physical activity, which is frequently performed to get a higher consciousness or to worship God. Interestingly, only 20 minutes of yoga was enough to show increased cognition in inexperienced subjects. Furthermore, speed and accuracy are major cognitive factors. Importantly, the order of jogging and yoga is no issue, because it differed between participants. One big disadvantage: no men were involved in the study.

4. Choir singing benefits heart and blood vessels

Who? Bjorn Vickhoff and colleagues

When? 2013

Where? University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Why? Choir singing improves our health: How come?

How? Swedish scientists grabbed this question by gathering eleven18-year-old volunteers, asking them to perform three 5-minute singing tasks as a group: (1) monotone humming, (2) Christian hymn singing(this song) and (3) mantra chanting. As a control task, the same participants silently read a simple text. During singing and reading, the participants’ heart rate variability or fluctuations (HRV) were measured.

What? Christian hymn singing and mantra chanting increase the HRV of the participants (compared to reading and humming).These bigger heart rate fluctuations (HRV) are beneficial for our health, because they decrease the chance of high blood pressure.

Spirituality-meter: 3 out of 5. Spiritual singing and -chanting seems beneficial for heart and blood vessels. The differences between the tasks are convincing, however, this effect could be due to the specific order of singing tasks. For example, could the HRV during mantra chanting be equally advantageous if it was the first singing task? Furthermore, eleven participants is a small experimental group.

5. Fasting helps during strategic decision making

Who? De Ridder and colleagues

When? 2014

Where? Utrecht University, Netherlands

Why? Hungry people rely more on their gut feeling. How does this influence their decision making?

How? Dutch scientists selected 30 students with a normal weight. When they arrived sober in the morning, half of them (the control group) had breakfast before doing the computerized version of the so-called Iowa Gambling Test (IGT). The other half (the fasting group) skipped breakfast and executed the IGT immediately. During the test, participants picked 100 cards from four different decks (A-D). A and B cards gave high rewards or even higher penalties, whereas C and D cards gave reasonable rewards or low penalties. In the long run, C and D cards gave the highest yields. The scores of the last 60 trials were compared between the control- and fasting group, assessing the ability of strategic decision making.

What? Fasting students made significantly more money during the IGT, suggesting they are more capable of making right decisions in complex situations. Feeling hungry is probably important, since fasting participants reported a much higher degree of hunger than control participants (79% vs. 22%).

Spirituality-meter: 3 out of 5: Fasting activities, like Ramadan, can be practiced to seek the presence of God or other spiritual beings or just to lose weight. This study clearly shows that moderate fasting enhances the strategic abilities of participants, suggesting feeling hungry is an advantage. Big question remains: So what about longer fasting (one or multiple days)? And what is the effect of spiritual fasting, like Ramadan?

Conclusion, limitations and future directions

Together, these studies suggest spirituality boosts our health and improves our cognition. However, there are three main limitations. Firstly, these studies only describe a few effects of spiritual practices. Since spirituality is thought to improve body-mind-spirit as a whole, larger amounts of effects of spiritual practices should be investigated during the same study. Secondly, spirituality depends mainly on the world view and the intention of the practitioners: Do they seek spiritual beings, a higher consciousness, or do they solely aim to improve their health? And what about spiritual experiences? To answer these questions, future participants should report about their motives before- and (non-)spiritual experiences during the spiritual practices. Thirdly, if more promising results appear, researchers could make strong claims by upscaling their experiments to phase III clinical trial proportions.

]]>http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/health-medicine/5-ways-to-connect-science-and-spirituality-2/feed/0Why Radicalize? Five Motives For Becoming A Jihadisthttp://www.united-academics.org/magazine/sex-society/why-radicalize-five-motives-for-becoming-a-jihadist-3/
http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/sex-society/why-radicalize-five-motives-for-becoming-a-jihadist-3/#commentsMon, 06 Jul 2015 09:30:08 +0000http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/?p=51283...Continue Reading]]>Radicalization is an analyzable process, rather than the outcome of an ‘evil’ personality.

Based on other research on radicalization, Karagiannis, of the University of Macedonia, sees five main motives (or, ‘mechanisms’) that make people evolve from moderately adhering to a cause to exhibiting radicalized thoughts and behaviors. In his research, he focuses on radicalised converts to Islam, whom he calls ‘jihadi converts’, but the mechanisms he describes are helpful in understanding radicalization for all kinds of religions, ideologies, and causes.

Personal victimization

The first mechanism is most often seen in people who feel that they are victimized by authorities. Discrimination and structural marginalization, when experienced personally and on a recurring basis, can easily give rise to anger, which can be transformed into rage and a consequent desire for revenge. For example, people who feel that they can no longer be themselves because of the racism or suppression they endure, can become so frustrated of being pushed out of (their) society that they see no other way but to turn to violence in order to voice their frustration and sense of indignation.

Political grievance

The second mechanism refers to a sense of group solidarity with others of the same affiliation (for example, of the same religion), and the knowledge that those who one identifies with are being threatened or attacked in other parts of the world. For example, in media reports of political events across the world, there is frequent reference to conflicts in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, and the Balkans portraying Muslims as the victims of infidel aggression. People who feel a strong connection to a certain group (in this case Muslims, but the mechanism works the same when it concerns Christians, Jews, women, or any other group) may feel the urge to protect the other members of that group against whoever is posing a threat to them. The knowledge that one’s group is in danger and in need of protection can be a motivation to book a flight ticket and take up arms.

The slippery slope effect

The ‘slippery slope effect’ can best be described with the following example of a personal account.

I went to a mosque for the first time with some Muslim friends. It was really something, all those people praying. There was just this serenity streaming from their faces. The people were nice. I made friends. I learned Arabic. Then one day I made the leap: I converted. . . Some friends had spoken to me about Afghanistan, Pakistan. I was curious, and besides, I had never really travelled anywhere. I thought it would be great to go over there. So I went. They totally took care of everything.

So from one thing, the next thing follows, and gradually one becomes more and more committed to a certain cause. One hardly ever goes from lukewarm interest to radical views in one step – it is usually a process involving many small steps.

The power of love

The fourth mechanism is one that should never be underestimated; the power of love. When somebody loves someone that they cannot live without, and this person starts going down a certain path, it can be very difficult to not go along with them. Most people will recognise that when in love, we tend to suddenly find the other person’s interests, or musical taste, or background, so much more interesting than we did before… The same can apply for ideological or religious radicalization. Many terrorist attacks can be traced back to this phenomena when attacks are, for example, carried out by brothers or couples that are reported to have radicalized together.

Inspirational preaching

The last mechanism in radicalization is the power of inspirational preaching. Karagianni states that as people are very perceptive to the power of speeches and preaching, the danger of preaching lies in the fact that it could change perceptions of reality and inspire individuals to act accordingly. This holds true especially when the preacher is seen as a figure of authority and a convincing speaker. If any of the other four mechanisms explained before is already set into motion, the power of an inciting and radical speaker could be the force to finish off the process.

In short, radicalization does not happen in a contextual vacuum or simply because people involved in the process are inherently ‘bad’. Especially the first two mechanisms, personal victimization and political grievance, show us that individuals can turn towards radical views because of the societal or political discontent they experience. Not knowing of any other way to voice this discontent or to improve the situation, radicalization may seem like the only way out – or forward – .

It’s the end of the day. You pull back the duvet, dive into bed and let your head hit the pillow. Your eyes shut and your mind lets go within seconds or minutes. But for some of us, bedtime is that grim, worrisome chore at the end of a day.

Thinking therapy

There are countless ways to encourage and improve sleep, but whether they work is entirely subjective; Soothing herbal teas, warm milk, scented oils, candles, vigorous exercise, yoga, hot baths, massages and, as a last resort, sleeping pills. Yet the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) will only prescribe one week’s worth of pills due to their addictiveness. So what is the next best thing? One method quickly gaining popularity is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
An image of someone laying on a couch dispersing their feelings and then being guided through some psycho-babble and exercises shoots across my mind. After further investigation I learned that the UK NHS prescribes CBT as a 6-week group workshop whereby each week a different part of the unhelpful cycle of sleeplessness is tackled.

The unhelpful cycle of sleeplessness starts with thoughts and worries regarding the inability to fall asleep flooding your mind, resulting in feelings of anxiety, stress and frustration. This in turn emanates into physical signs such as increased heart rate, sweating and muscle tension followed by behaviours such as tossing and turning and clock-watching. The last phase feeds back into the first, resulting in a vicious, worsening cycle. Can insomnia really be improved by thought alone?

Sleep cycle tactics

CBT targets these four different phases of the cycle using various techniques. Below is a summary of the 5 main tips given by CBT psychologists.

Worry time

Allocate half an hour a day to worry about anything and everything, preferably not too soon before bedtime. If worries pop up throughout the day then just write them down for ‘worry time’.

Getting to sleep

Here are a few rules: Only go to bed when you are feeling sleepy (even if that means staying up until 3 am), do not use the bed for anything except sleep and sex, get out of bed if you have been lying awake for 20 minutes (and repeat throughout the night if necessary) and get up at the same time every day (even on weekends).

It’s crucial to wind down before bedtime, sleep isn’t something that you can switch on and off. Dim the lights in your room, put away all your gadgets, and spend the last few minutes before bed doing some reading or relaxation exercises. Ensure you get enough sunlight in the morning too as this will help reset your body clock. Exercising will also improve sleep but do this no later than late afternoon.

Coping after poor sleep

Tiredness and lethargy can take over after poor sleep, but energy levels are like a generator rather than a battery so you should try to stay active and carry out the plans you initially wanted to do. Act as if you have had a good night’s sleep and notice how well you are able to carry out tasks. Naps are not recommended but it may help some people if they are kept to no more than 20 minutes.

Stimulus control

Training your body to associate your bed with sleep is crucial. Watching TV, working, worrying and using your phone in bed makes your body think that it’s a good place to stay awake and get things done. Avoid all these activities in bed and find a new place to do them, even if it’s only as far as your bedroom desk. Another important point to mention is bathroom lighting. We often brush our teeth straight before bed, exposing ourselves to bright bathroom lights. This suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone involved in the sleep/wake cycle, delaying the natural onset of tiredness. It is recommended to brush your teeth no earlier than 30 minutes before bedtime.

Relaxation

Learning to relax is a key life skill but takes practice. Relaxation soundtracks, including Yoga Nidra, can guide you through gradual muscle relaxation. You should practice this every day for the next 7 days, and preferably when you are already feeling relatively calm.
An example of such tracks can be found here.

Better than pills

Earlier this year, a review of 8 published studies on the efficacy of CBT was carried out by Koffel and colleagues from the universities of Minneapolis and Pennsylvania in the U.S. They found that group CBT sessions improved sleep efficiency (this is the percentage of time you spend in bed whereby you’re asleep) and the time it takes to fall asleep, and these changes persisted post-treatment.

Other studies have also shown that CBT may work just as well as sleeping pills, or even better. In 2006 a research group based at the University of Bergen in Norway conducted a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial and found that insomniacs who underwent CBT for 6 weeks improved on most sleep outcome measures when compared to those who took zopiclone, a sleep medication, and the placebo medication group. The CBT group also exhibited better sleep management 6 months later. Clinical trials have shown that short-term use of zopiclone, like the older benzodiazepines, improves sleep but they did not investigate beyond 4 weeks of treatment so the participants in this Bergen study may have developed tolerance at 6 weeks.

Mind over matter

Change is certainly not easy. Obstacles inevitably exist, be they our work patterns, living arrangements or our own thoughts. The efforts to knock down these hurdles, albeit a pain, will be worth it. Sleep deprivation has been associated with a range of health problems including heightened prevalence for heart disease and dementia, so it is in every sufferer’s best interest to fight it.

Keep a sleep diary to record how many of the hours you spend in bed are attributed to being asleep and this will help you establish whether your sleep efficiency improves. Anything below 85% is considered abnormal. Not all of the CBT tips may work, but all you may need is one or two and you’ll be on your way to sleeping like a baby and, most importantly, saving your health.

The Big Bang explains the presence of the two lightest elements in the universe, hydrogen and helium, but the origin of many of the heavier elements that exist today remains unsolved.

A promising theory to explain their creation is the formation of population III stars. Population III stars would have formed from the hydrogen and helium available after the Big Bang and then created heavier elements in their cores. When these stars died, they would have exploded as supernovae, flinging the heavier elements they had created across the universe.

Finding population III stars would thus provide a crucial missing link in our understanding of the formation of the universe.

Too far away

Population III stars are notoriously difficult to find, despite a growing number of searches for them. “This class of stars has not yet been observed. Until now, when we think we have discovered two galaxies which may consist of Population III stars,” says Claes-Erik Rydberg from Stockholm University and lead author of a recent study searching for these stars.

Since population III stars would have formed very early on in the universe, they are by now too far away to be observed. So rather than searching for individual stars, Rydberg and his colleagues searched for entire galaxies made up of population III stars. Their approach was to first model what these galaxies would look like using computer simulations and then compare the predictions from their models to real observations taken by the Hubble Space telescope.

Gravitational lenses

The observations the team used came from photographs of 25 clusters of galaxies. But it isn’t these galaxies that Rydberg is interested in. Instead, these galaxies are used as ‘gravitational lenses’ to reveal what lies behind them. The technique relies on a weird fact from general relativity: heavy things warp the space around them. As the 25 galaxy clusters are so massive, they bend the light from everything behind them and throw it forwards. The result is that these galaxy clusters reveal light from objects that are even further away from us, that would have otherwise been too faint for us to see.

Rydberg sifted through more than 50,000 of these objects. For each one, he compared the population III model to the real data to see if there was a match. “I started building the program a little more than 2 years ago,” says Rydberg. “Since then we have been searching and analysing possible objects.” After all the analysis, the team found two candidates that were best explained by the population III galaxy model rather than a more mundane galaxy.

Future telescopes

Although these are the best candidates found to date, Rydberg cautions against claiming any discoveries too soon. There are no telescopes currently powerful enough to confirm whether the two galaxies really do contain population III stars. However, there is a critical test that can be done on Earth.

Population III stars are expected to emit a very specific type of light called the Lyman-alpha spectral line. If this light were observed coming from the two candidate galaxies using ground-based telescopes, it would be a strong hint that they really do contain population III stars. For Rydberg, this would be a huge result and could lead to future telescopes, such as NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, being sent to investigate these two galaxies further for confirmation of the elusive population III stars.

In an article recently published in Science Translational Medicine, Klinghoffer and colleagues from Presage Biosciences and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle designed a new system to analyze tumor sensitivity to drugs directly in patients. The goals of the first clinical trial were to establish if the technique is effective in humans and if it causes adverse effects.

After injecting vincristine into the enlarged lymph nodes of four patients with lymphomas, the researchers reported that patients tolerated the procedure well, reported no or mild pain, and showed only mild toxicity, like erythema and swelling, which resolved without treatment.

The scientists thus concluded that the CIVO technology can also be applied to human patients, and envisioned further improvements to better target the drug to cancer tissue, track its distribution, and allow the injection of a larger number of drugs at the same time. Consequently, the first clinical trial led to the development of a new CIVO device. Its improved performance has already been confirmed in additional studies in animals.

Future improvements

At the moment, the CIVO system can be used only for tumors that are accessible by injection through the skin, like lymphomas, cutaneous tumors, soft tissue sarcomas, and breast carcinomas, so an important challenge will be to develop a device that can be used for tumors in internal organs.

In addition, the scientists will try to design a method to detect tumor responses in real time without the need of extracting the tumor. This method will likely be based on noninvasive imaging.

Finally, it will be important to establish if the tumor local responses to the tested drugs accurately predict whether the drug can successfully treat the patient once it is administered systemically, as it happens with mice. The good news is that further clinical trials to test CIVO technology are already ongoing.